Formal Arrangements
by Gnom DePlume
Summary: Lydia's last high school formal doesn't go quite according to plan...nothing ever does, when the ghost with the most is invited!


Disclaimer: Don't own, plz don't sue. O_o

A/N: Yes, I know, I'm so lame. I don't update in forever, and then I come out with this little one shot. But srsly, I lost my groove and I figured I'd better practice a little before I ruined the next chapter of a story I've spent a lot of time on. See if you can find all the crap I'm shamelessly borrowing from other, more talented people.

FORMAL ARRANGEMENTS

Enough was enough! Derek was really pushing it. She'd known when he asked her to the formal that he was playing some kind of game, and everything he'd done since confirmed that he wanted only one thing from her. Every sweet thing he'd said to her and every wince when she'd show up wearing black – black hair, black eyeliner, black dresses, black combat boots.

But trying to kiss her in front of everybody! When she could see in his eyes that he thought she could put a hex on him as she danced skyclad with the devil, but believing that she wouldn't because he was just that smooth.

She backed away from him.

"Lydia, what's wrong?" He hesitantly reached out, his voice sure but his hands shaky.

"So this is the bet you made with Claire? What, you get me to let you kiss me and then dump me while they all watch?" Was it too much to ask that he try this shit after the dance, to let her at least have this one evening for herself?

"You knew?!" And now he looked really frightened, this big football star in his rented tux. Frightened of her, all five foot and four inch nothing.

"Of course I knew." Why else would he even be talking to her?

"You don't know anything!" Fear made him spiteful. "The kiss wasn't even part of the deal – I just thought I'd do you a favor, give you your first and only kiss, because god knows no one wants to touch a freak like you!"

Claire, at the forefront of the gathered crowd, starting clapping, and soon the rest of the students from both schools joined in. Lydia couldn't even hear her friends Prudence and Bertha trying to tell the crowd to shut up. The teachers attempted to break things up, but stood more chance of cleaning up a flood with a napkin.

And you know, that hurt. Her fists clenched in her long satin gloves. Even the perverted ghost who'd looked up everyone else's skirt (but not hers) and tried to marry her had never kissed her. Lydia's witchy reputation was largely undeserved, but at the moment she was itching to curse this boy – even if it meant calling on the only devil she knew, who was probably extremely angry with her after getting eaten by a sandworm. As long as he took out his rage on Derek and Claire, too, she didn't mind going down in flames!

Squeezing her eyes shut, she shouted, "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!"

A hush fell over the balloon and streamer festooned gym.

Cracking open, her eyes darted left to right. He wasn't here. They were all staring at her like she'd grown a second head. Her breath left her in a whoosh and her shoulders drooped. Of course he wouldn't come – not for her. The freak.

Then she realized they were staring at something behind her.

Hardly daring to breathe, she slowly turned.

And there he was, wearing that horrible maroon tuxedo, sandy and torn up. His hands stuffed in his pockets and his maniacal grin gleaming yellow. His green eyes lambent in the dim lighting as he dragged his gaze lecherously over her body. "What do we have here?" He chuckled. "This a private party or can anybody crash?"

The lights overhead shattered, raining glass down on the crowd, while a spotlight blinked into being and focused on him. "I'm a tad underdressed, aren't I?" He inspected his worse for wear outfit, then snapped his fingers and admired the lapels of his black and red striped tail coat, with a bat motif she noticed happened to match hers.

Goosebumps breaking out quite unexpectedly at hearing his rough, mocking voice, her hasty plan twisted in on itself. As if in a dream, the mass hysterical screaming like a distant roaring in her ears, she crossed the few steps between them and, yanking him down to her level by the lapels, kissed him full on his molding, necrotic lips.

Her eyes squeezed shut because she didn't want to see him reject her too, she was unaware of his wickedly angled eyebrows sliding up into his hairline in surprise before he looked up and made the first sincere prayer of his unlife – thanking the gods that he was finally gonna get his Lydia-styled poontang. Before she could draw back in embarrassment because she couldn't even get a perverted poltergeist to have anything to do with her, he started kissing back, yanking her flush against his body with hands that seemed to be everywhere.

"Stop that at once! This is a school dance, not a den of iniquity! There is to be four inches between dance partners at all times!" a voice fought through the pandemonium of students.

Lydia barely heard the admonition, but the annoying voice was interrupting Beetlejuice's wooing, here, so he waggled an eyebrow in that direction and Miss Shannon, proprietress of the strict Miss Shannon's School for Girls, felt her arm, completely without her volition, reach out and snag one of the ragged plastic flowers in the insipid pink and white decorations. Then she clenched it between her teeth and swept the clueless principal of the boys' school into a tango.

Beetlejuice bent Lydia backwards and with a final resounding smack let go of her lips to smirk and ask, "Whaddya say we ditch this crowd?" while pulling her hips to his suggestively.

Blinking in disorientation, Lydia panted, "I was hoping for, well, for a dance?"

"We'll _dance_ all right. How's the horizontal tango sound to ya?"

"I meant with music." And before he opened his mouth, probably to say that that could be arranged, she clarified further. "And clothes on. Like at a party."

"Hell," he remarked thoughtfully, pulling her up with a flourish. "Why not? Whatever my darling little sugar-pie bride wants!"

The shadowed chaos around their spotlight bled into sharp relief, candles bursting into life at all angles on twisted, gravity defying candelabras. The flames illuminated a room that was now all surreal black and white, balloons replaced with grinning skulls and streamers exchanged for cobwebs. The plastic flowers had melted into drippy black husks and the refreshment tables sprouted spider legs, spilling half the punch and leaving them lopsided.

The doors, transformed into huge fell gates, slammed shut as students and chaperones alike stampeded for the exit. The monstrous handles stuck out their tongues and razzed the trapped partygoers.

Looking at her peers' frightened faces, some bloodied with glass shards stuck in their fancy clothes, Lydia felt a pang of remorse. But only briefly, because the lackluster DJ had been shoved out of the way by a skeleton crew playing each other in a raucous beat, and suddenly the room was packed with dancers, ghosts and spooks and phantoms and who knew what else, and it was impossible not to dance with them.

Beetlejuice threw Lydia into the air with a twirl, laughing as she shrieked, only to catch her and do it again, swing dancing through the floating throng with wild abandon, feet never touching the floor. At some point, she saw Bertha waltzing with a dark stranger, and Prudence talking to someone out of sight. The punch was spiked, and then spiked again, until it was more like alcohol with a hint of juice. But all the dancing made Lydia thirsty and she drank down the smoking red liquid in her cup.

Everything was dizzy and time meant nothing, until finally the music paused for a moment as the lead singer in a bowler hat of the bony band said something…dedicating the last song to someone? And the music this time was slow and familiar and just she and Beetlejuice were slow dancing for an eternity before other couples joined in. And then Lydia didn't remember anything at all.

Which was a shame, because everyone should remember their wedding night.


End file.
